thoughts at 3 am

so i'm having another one of those moments where i am wide awake in the middle of the night. its pretty pathetic when its more common for me to sleep the whole night through than to wake up now.

anyway, right now i think i woke up because i'm worried about moving into my apartment, possibly tomorrow. thing is, there is some furniture in my future bedroom left by the former tenants, and left by the painter, that i'll have to move out before moving in. the space isn't small, but its not too big, either, and there's not much manueverability. my dad got a little pissed at me when i told him we'd have to move this stuff out. its going to be a bitch and a half, and i think the worry woke me up tonight.

i'm also worried about how everything is going to fit. i'm sure it will be fine and i shouldn't worry, but that's my thing. i can't shut my brain and the little voices off. i think i would sleep better if i could. how does a chronic worrier just turn that off?

i'm concerned about my worrying, because its the sort of thing that could lead to ocd. you think, did i lock the front door when i left? did i take my keys out? let me check to see if my keys are in my bag. ok, phew, they're there. did i lock my car? did i turn out off the tv? did i turn off the straightening iron? did i turn off the space heater under my desk when i left work? what if that happens or this happens?

when you have a similar routine everyday, you really cut down on the worrying. i no longer worry about whether or not i finished all my assignments for class, or if my teachers will like me, or if i'll get good grades (p.s. one secret to getting good grades is ocd-level paranoia). i don't worry about meeting people and if they'll like me, because i don't meet many new people on a regular basis anymore. and as far as that is concerned, i'm pretty confident.

i consider the amount my worrying has decreased in recent years (basically since i started college) as an achievement. i chalk it up to experience and maturity. but i think my life has just gotten less stressful in general, and i think for a while there, i was blissfully happy in many degrees.

but even though i feel like i've overcome a little of my worrying problem, i still have the most recent ailment: not being able to sleep through the night.

i wish i could explain what happens to me in the middle of the night. i fall asleep around midnight, usually a little before. i doesn't really matter how early or late i fall asleep, i usually end a rem cycle around 4 a.m. and wake up. like wide eyed awake. i know the feeling of alertness will only last an hour or two, but keeping my brain busy and off worrying for that time is a chore.

if i was in my own room, i would just turn on the light and read, or turn on the tv. but since i've been spending a lot of time in matt's studio, its hard for me to do that without bothering him. since it is the middle of the night i try to be as considerate of him as possible.

at first i tried to just fall back asleep. i try all the tricks. concentrating on relaxing every body part from my toes up through my head. counting from 1 up. counting from 99 down. singing. nothing works, and getting agitated about not being able to fall asleep just makes it worse. i feel like sometimes i'm giving myself an ulcer.

sometimes, if it gets bad enough, i turn on the tv. when i was testing out the helio phone, i played paris hilton's jewel quest. that solution actually worked the best. maybe i should buy a small video game expressly for this purpose? how much do p2ps run?

tonight i was stressing about my apartment, so i decided to check out elfa alternatives at the container store's website. my parents bought me this huge shelving system from there last december and i'm putting it in my room when i move. i want to make it look less like it belongs in a kitchen and more like it belongs in a bedroom. after browsing through their site i moved on to other things...checking email and such. but i didn't want to actually send any emails to people for fear that they'll think i'm slightly unhinged because i'm awake at such an hour.

also, you never know what a sleep deprived brain might babble out incoherently in the middle of the night.

thankfully, such discretion is never needed on a blog.